


Once More With Feeling

by mrs_leary (julie)



Category: Merlin (TV) RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-06
Updated: 2009-03-06
Packaged: 2017-10-28 08:32:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie/pseuds/mrs_leary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bradley is a <i>Buffy</i> fanboy, which doesn’t really help him make friends with either Tony or Colin, until the musical episode ‘Once More With Feeling’ finally sweeps him away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once More With Feeling

♦

Colin opened his hotel room door to find Bradley there. This was not unexpected. What _was_ unexpected was the rather shocked look on his face, for Bradley was usually one of those guys who remained enviably cool and unfazed no matter what was going on around him, unless of course he was having fun pretending to be uncool and overacting like mad.

Stepping back to let him in, Colin saw that Bradley was bearing four bottles of rather expensive looking beer and a DVD. ‘Bit of an occasion, is it?’ Colin asked.

Bradley propped his rear on the drawer unit, and put down the beer; the bottles were in a cardboard six–pack, with two empty slots. ‘I got them for Tony. It’s his favourite.’

Colin chuckled. ‘By the time we’re his age, we’ll have fancy tastes in beer, too.’

‘Yeah…’ Bradley seemed a bit dazed. ‘I found this,’ he announced, waving the DVD, and then handing it over. The cover bore Tony’s name and a tiny image of him as a bespectacled Giles. ‘It’s _Once More With Feeling_ , the musical episode of Buffy – dubbed in French. The best fifty minutes of television _ever_ – dubbed in French. I thought it’d be good for a laugh.’

‘Ah. Turned you away, did he?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But he still claimed two of the beers.’

Bradley scrunched up his handsome face. ‘Yeah.’

Colin sat down on the end of the bed just near Bradley so they were almost facing each other. ‘Why’s that then…?’

‘He thought I… He thought we…’ Bradley stared at Colin, suddenly intent. ‘Tell me something. Did you sleep with Caroline?’

The question was so unexpected that Colin couldn’t help but smirk happily at the sudden influx of warm memories. Trying to save the situation, he winked at Bradley, and said, ‘A gentleman never tells.’

‘Yeah right.’

OK, it was pretty obvious that Colin had just answered _yes_. Something occurred to him that wiped the smirk off his face. ‘Where d’you hear that?’

‘Tony.’

‘Huh. Well, I hope he heard it from her. Ladies are allowed to tell. If they want.’

‘The thing is…’ Bradley said heavily. ‘The thing is…’

‘Yes…?’

Bradley sighed. Grabbed a bottle of beer, knocked the cap off, and held it out to Colin; took one for himself.

‘Ah, that’s sweet,’ Colin sighed, revelling in the taste of it, the smooth kick of it. ‘Think I wanna become accustomed to that.’

‘Yeah. Look. The thing is… he thinks you and I have some kind of competition going.’

Colin quirked a brow at him. ‘Yeah…?’

‘He thought I was there to even it up.’ Bradley went bright red. ‘You know. You slept with –’ he made quote marks with his free hand – ‘“Merlin’s mum”, so I wanted to sleep with…’

‘Arthur’s dad,’ Colin concluded. He considered this for a long moment. _Huh!_ Then he looked up at Bradley. ‘So, did you?’

‘What! No, of _course_ not!’

Colin laughed. ‘I win, then!’ Awesome. He saluted Bradley with the beer, and drained half the bottle.

But Bradley was looking at him darkly. ‘You haven’t, have you? I mean, you haven’t made this into some kind of competition that I didn’t even know about?’

‘Course not,’ he said scornfully. Then just as Bradley finally relaxed a bit, Colin added, ‘Bet I’d win, though.’

‘Oh shut up, you would not.’ Bradley kind of shuddered. ‘He was pretty convinced, you know. And the more I protested… Well. He said – He said we should –’

A smirk was growing irresistibly on Colin’s face. He knew what was coming.

Bradley couldn’t even look at him. ‘He said we should sleep together – I mean, you and me – and quit plaguing everyone else.’

He chortled. ‘Plaguing – that’s nice. You ever received any complaints?’

An attempt at an offended huff. ‘Well, nobody told me I was actually _plaguing_ them, I suppose.’

‘OK, well –’ Colin waited until Bradley was paying full attention again, though he was still keeping his head turned away. Then Colin patted the bed beside him. ‘Come on, then. I guess you don’t have any choice now.’

‘What?!’

‘ _Giles_ told you to. Your _Watcher_. So now you _have_ to.’

‘Colin…’ Bradley protested rather weakly.

‘Come on. _I’m_ not gonna turn you away.’

‘You’re not?’ Bradley seemed a bit surprised by that. He was looking directly at Colin again now. And he was curious.

But if no longer shocked, he was still kinda rocked. Taken aback. Colin figured he shouldn’t really take advantage. And maybe it was as well to let it all sink in first. ‘Hey, Bradley the Vampire Slayer,’ he said, a bit gentle.

‘Mmm?’

‘Everything that Tony told you…?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Says far more about him than you.’

Bradley thought about that. ‘Yeah. Course,’ he eventually said.

‘Dirty old man, he is,’ Colin offered in his thickest Armagh accent.

Bradley suddenly smiled, and finally relaxed. He considered Colin for a long moment, and then he announced, ‘I’ll have you know that vampire slayers are all girls.’

‘Hey, you said it, mate.’

Bradley snorted, and then suddenly he’d leapt on top of Colin, and they were rolling around on Colin’s bed, tussling and tickling and generally being idiots. Which was one of the good things about hanging out with Bradley.

Eventually they gave up on that, and just lay there, randomly sprawled and overlapping, not deigning to withdraw their limbs from each other. Colin was happy. Bradley was gorgeous, yes, but to be able to innocently muck around like this with another guy was just as wonderful, if in a rather different way. He offered, ‘You wanna watch the DVD, then?’

Bradley was surprisingly reluctant. ‘Well, yeah, all right, but…’

‘Good for a laugh, you said.’

‘You haven’t seen the original episode, though.’

‘So…?’

‘So, you won’t find this French one funny if you don’t know what’s going on.’

Tony singing as Rupert Giles, dubbed in French, and surrounded by vampires, witches, slayers and who knew what else – that sounded pretty funny to Colin, but instead he suggested, ‘Show me the original, then.’

Bradley looked at him. Still strangely reluctant. ‘You don’t even like _Buffy_.’

‘So, convert me! The best fifty minutes of television _ever_ , you said.’

Bradley suddenly grinned. ‘I did, didn’t I?’ And he sprang up off the bed, and dashed off to his room; came back with a DVD case from a box set; turned on the TV and set up the disc; brought the two remaining beers with him to the bed.

And they lay there next together propped up against pillows and the headboard, and Bradley sang along happily and fairly competently to a lot of it, but he didn’t miss a single word of either Buffy’s or the bleached–blond vampire’s. And when at last those two characters locked together in a big passionate musical–theatre kiss, Bradley turned to Colin, and they did exactly the same while the whole _Buffy_ cast chorused, _‘Where do we go from **here** …?’_

And amazingly Bradley and Colin kept going through the credits, this eager lush kiss endless, and when the DVD skipped back to the menu they still kept going, until on the third run through of the filler music Bradley finally fumbled for the remote and found the stop button.

Unfortunately the brief interruption seemed to bring him to his senses, for he rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. Back to being kinda rocked. Taken aback.

‘Well,’ Colin eventually offered, ‘no wonder you think it’s the best television _ever_ , if that keeps happening during the finale.’

Bradley just softly snorted. ‘Uh… Not exactly a regular occurrence,’ he said with an attempt at light irony. ‘So, uh…’ He turned his head to look warily at Colin. ‘You think Tony was right, then?’

‘What, about you wanting to sleep with him?’

‘Yeah.’ Then Bradley caught up and glared at him. ‘No, you _idiot_. About you and me.’

‘I don’t care about him,’ Colin said. ‘What do you think?’

‘Dunno. What about you?’

Colin just smiled at him, slow and easy. ‘Oh, I’m thinking we should.’

Bradley blinked at him. Glanced down at his mouth. ‘Well, maybe – to start with – we could, you know… try that kiss again.’

‘Sure,’ he replied, reaching a hand to gently shape itself to Bradley’s nearer shoulder. ‘Once more –’

‘ _Don’t_ say it, Morgan!’

‘– with feeling?’

‘What, more feeling than _that_?’ He sounded as if he thought it impossible.

Colin slid his hand across to Bradley’s far shoulder, and brought him up onto his side to face him. ‘We can but try…’

♦


End file.
